Youssef Al-Aila

Personal Info

Country of residence: Portugal

Gender: Male

Born in: 1951

Information

Novelist and researcher: Youssef Al-Aila.

His upbringing: Novelist and researcher Youssef Abdullah Al-Aila was born in the city of Qalqilya in 1951 and received his primary and secondary education in its schools. He completed his university studies at Beirut Arab University between 1970 and 1974, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Language and Literature. He then worked as a teacher in West Bank schools. He was arrested by Israeli security forces in 1975 on charges of belonging to Palestinian organizations and sentenced to four years in prison with dismissal from his job. He lived under house arrest for eighteen years until the arrival of the Palestinian Authority in 1993, when the Authority reinstated him to his job and Israel allowed him freedom of movement and travel.

His culture: In the literary field, he was influenced by the English novelist Emile Brontë and her novel Wuthering Heights, then by the Italian poet Allegiari Dante in his epic The Divine Comedy. He was also influenced by the Algerian Islamic writer Malek Bennabi and the Algerian novelist Ahlam Mosteghanemi in her novel Memory of the Flesh.

His cultural stance: Novelist and researcher Youssef Al-Aila believes that Islamic cultural identity, in all its manifestations, especially since the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924, is subjected to attempts at erasure and obliteration by the European other, specifically the Anglo-Saxon cultural other, which necessitates preserving its constants and defending the security of its thought by all means, including novel writing.

His political stance: He firmly believes that the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the sovereign State of Israel constituted "a legal theft unprecedented in human history." He argues that a non-sovereign organization has no right to recognize a sovereign state and relinquish its homeland in exchange for political gain. From a purely legal perspective, the PLO negotiated its own demise and that of its people from the Palestinian homeland, which became a mere foothold for Israel, when it agreed to participate with only a partial seat at the most important international peace conference – Madrid – which defined the contours of the Palestinian destiny and removed it from the realm of national, religiously and historically grounded identity, placing it instead within the realm of illusory politics based on the guarantees of powerful foreign powers. This was the trap of Oslo: it prevented Palestinians from participating on equal footing with Israel in the peace process, a process approved by the political decision-makers, those opportunists from around the world. Why was the PLO the only delegation lacking independence in the legal representation of its people at the Madrid Conference? What was the legal significance of participating in Madrid through a joint Jordanian position? Didn't this imply tacit legal acceptance of the alternative homeland?

The decision was Resolution 181 grants us half of Palestine, and on the eve of the Madrid Conference, we were a state by virtue of a resolution from the Palestinian National Council convened in Algiers in 1988. Why did they relinquish these two legal and constitutional considerations and enter the Oslo process as a weak and insignificant organization, incapable of possessing a state's agenda? If we truly hadn't left Palestine, we should have participated in the conference from an independent Palestinian position, not under anyone's cloak! Why did they accept being an illegitimate fragment after claiming to be the formidable Palestinian force? What is the logical justification for entering a political process that deprived the Palestinian people of their legal basis for existence?

For the Palestinian people, the Oslo Accords were worse than the German defeat in World War II. Ironically, those who openly and officially accepted defeat did not lose their German or Japanese homelands, while those who refused to accept defeat lost everything, even their homeland, by their own timid and whispered admission. We left Palestine through the legal gate, just as our ancestors were forcibly expelled from Andalusia and other places they conquered. The strange irony is that our legal exit from Our homeland was established during a time of peace, or so they called it, under the pretext of the international political situation. Those who boast of defending the crime of Oslo are either naive, to whom the saying applies: "How much is a veil!" or are among the dregs who profit from the degradation of their mothers in the market of prostitution and slavery.

His literary works include

* "Mustafa Sabri's Reflections" – booklet 1993
* "The Martyr Abu Ali Iyad" – booklet 1994 * "
Confrontation
" – autobiography 1995 * "The Spinning of Memory" – novel 2000
* "The Time of Mirrors" – novel 2001
* "Dunes of Black Gold" – short stories 2003
* "The Phoenix's Homeland" – novel 2005
* Dozens of political and cultural articles published in local newspapers,
in addition to numerous studies, research papers, and creative works published in local and international press.

Short stories

* "Dunes of Black Gold": a collection of short stories including:The Boys and the Sun – The Dear Departed – The Castle and the Fisherman – A Woman Who Doesn't Get Jealous – Calm Down, Lightning – A Struggle That Never Dies – An Old Woman Who Cut Her Hair – The Neem Gazelle – A Tragedy on the Shore – The Battle of the Snakes – A Face of Ashes
* Other stories: Kidnapping – Quenching – Innocence – Crime – Cockfight – Hobby – Longing – Spinster's Dream – Rituals – Flood – Writing – Clinical Examination – The Language of Eyes – Seasons – The Prophet – The Exile – Forgiveness – Amber, O Time – Lesson – Sea Fishing – Two Hearts – Complaint – Wandering – The Bull of the Meadow – Eid Day.

Political and literary articles

include: The Split Self – The Groan of Trees – Beyond Politics – A Non-Arab Rhythm – The Days of the Ottoman Empire – Premature Thoughts – The Arab Nations – Beirut-Jericho – The Bells of Return – Algebra and Time – My Homeland Is Not a Suitcase – Barriers – On the Constant and the Variable – Dialogue with the Self – The Discourse of Similarity – The Priest – Echoes of the Days – The Conspiracy Knot – You Are Sixteen – Readings in Political Possibility 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 – Space Cultures – The Legislative Text – Lateral Thinking – A Guest at the Citadel – Abu al-Izz – Hebron – Israel and Mathematical Interpretation – Open Sesame – The Crisis of the Pioneering Intellectual – Millionaires – The Remains of the Revolution – Projections of Politics – Human Cloning – The Empire of Waste – Prisoners – Cultural Assassination – Alternatives to History – Obscenity and the Veil – Mount Nebo – Sessions in Political Education – Qalqilya Association for the Disabled – A Lesson in Belonging – The Last Watch – The Obsessions of Life – Herod – The Unity of Culture – Burning Stages – Dialogue of Generations – Love and Creativity – Tuesday Pioneers Al-Hamra – Canaanite – Unveiling the Opposites – Mirror of Myself – June Conference – Diaspora Conference – Death of the Rabbits – Ain Zamzam – The Wedding of Zein – The Boy of Husan – The Philosophy of Dream and Politics – The Philosophy of Siege – The Voice of Memory – A Perplexed Poem – An Armenian Story – Security Readings – Major Issues – Birzeit Novel – Ramallah Jerusalem – The Sick Man – Martyrs of Siris – The Memory of Al-Muqattam – The Third Option – An Imminent Danger – Long Live Science.

Research

* Liberating the Past from the Future and Liberating the Future from the Past: A paper submitted to the Goethe Institute, Berlin, 1999.
* The Battle of the Tunnel: Submitted to the Palestinian Ministry of Information, 2000.
* The Status of Jerusalem: Jerusalem, Identity or Crisis of Conscience? In collaboration with Dr. Wolfgang Freund, University of Paris 16, 2001.

Novels

* Spinning Memory: A novel published by the Palestinian Writers Union in 2000, addressing the duality of liberation and occupation at its intersection with the duality of love and war.
* The Spinning of Memory: The Influence of the Arabic Novel on the Palestinian Novel: Ahlam Mosteghanemi's *Memory of the Flesh* and Youssef Al-Aila's *The Spinning of Memory*: Master's thesis at An-Najah National University by researcher Raeda Yassin.
* The Spinning of Memory and Other Novels: The Palestinian Hero After the 1993 Oslo Accords: Master's thesis at An-Najah National University by researcher Ahlam Bisharat.
* The Time of Mirrors: A novel published by the Palestinian Writers' Union in 2001: It attempts to shed light on the dubious role played by donor countries in liquidating the Palestinian cause after Oslo through political funding.
* The Time of Mirrors: Master's thesis: The role of the Palestinian hero after Oslo and his devastating defeat.
* The Phoenix's Homeland: A novel published by Ugarit Media and Publishing Center in 2005.
* The Phoenix's Homeland: A novel that attempts to illuminate the transformations of the hero who betrays his people and his cause through the intersection of the fantasy of myth in its social and religious dimensions and the strangeness of science fiction based on intellectual creativity but used to negate and erase the other.

Translations

* The Apartheid Wall: Submitted to the Office of the Governor of Qalqilya Governorate.
* Israeli Settlements in the Qalqilya Area: Submitted to the Office of the Governor of Qalqilya Governorate.

Cultural Participation

* Representing the Union of Palestinian Writers at the Stavenger Festival in Norway in 1998. Participation Title: "Religion and Freedom of Expression."
* Writing articles in the local press on normalization and resistance: 1- Normalization between Self and Other 2- The Druze Experience 3- The Coptic Experience 4- The Andalusian Experience 5- The Lebanese Formula 6- The Arab Islamic Project 7- The Jewish Project 8- A Discourse on Politics in the Language of Literature 9- A Discourse on Philosophy in the Language of Mobilization 10- The End of the Road.
* Co-authoring the book (Palestinian Visions) with others, under the auspices of Dr. Wolfgang Freund of Paris 16 University.
* Writing for Al-Quds, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, and Al-Kalima newspapers: published by the Union of Palestinian Writers in the West Bank, and Al-Israa: published by the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs.

Source